Image Capture - Intermediate - Friday 11 NovemberScanning and image optimisation techniques for those who already have some experience. Includes calibration, techniques for capturing different types of images and ways of getting the most out of scanning and optimisation software.

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act and the University Campus

As part of its 2005-2006 Intellectual Property in Academia Online Workshop Series, the Center for Intellectual Property at University of Maryland University College is pleased to offer some answers to questions such as:

Are students on your campus copying and transmitting music and copyrighted data on institutional networks?

Has your institution been served with cease & desist letters? Have you had to remove content from websites as a result of such a demand?

Do you have concerns about institutional responsibilities when contacted by a content provider?

UKeiG Meeting: FOI: How are we doing?

Implications for e-information and the information professionalThe John Rylands University Library, University of ManchesterWednesday, 23 November 2005, 9.45 - 16.30

Course Outline

The first year of the Freedom of Information Act has seen the emergence of a series of new activities: new journals on freedom of information, records managers in high demand, courses on every aspect of FOI and tales of journalists aggressively testing the system to expose the cracks.

This meeting focuses on the information and how it is handled. Firstly, case studies and examples that illustrate in a practical way the progress that has been made during 2005 will be presented, followed by two sessions dealing with the e-information itself. How FOI affects the methods by which information and especially e-information is handled, and new opportunities for exploiting e-information will be described.

Finally, the meeting will cover the role of the information professional. Where do information professionals, in whatever guise, fit in? Are those not formally trained in information management now running FOI activities? Does it matter? Are traditional information skills such as organisation, retrieval, and handling enquiries being used or is the wheel being re-invented? This meeting hopes to explore these issues, answer the questions and stimulate lively discussions.

Topics to be covered include:

Summary of progress to date

Examples of best practice

E-information practice - using disclosure logs

E-information opportunities - using FOI as a research tool

The role of the information professional - a lost opportunity

Looking ahead - new initiatives for the future

Course Presenter: Steve WoodSteve Wood is a Senior lecturer in Information Management at Liverpool John Moores University. He lectures and researches on FOI and e-business areas. He is editor of a Freedom of Information Act Blog and founding editor of Open Government: a journal on freedom of information.

Other speakers include Tim Turner, FOI Officer, Wigan Council and Guy Daines, Policy Advisor at CILIP.

To register your interest in this meeting, reserve a place by 16 November, or request further details, please email meetings@ukeig.org.uk.

People's Network Launches Enquire, Discover and Read

England's public libraries are joining forces to provide a suite of new online services - Enquire, Discover and Read.

Managed by the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA) the new services will be available for the first time from a single national Web site for public libraries with 24-hour/7-days a week library services to help answer any question, guide users through the Web and explore books and reading online.

The Enquire service will give the public online access around the clock to library and information staff. In an innovative move which has involved co-operation with international partners in the US and Canada, questions of any kind are answered in real time, 24/7, free of charge either via a live chat link or by email.

Discover helps people to find their way through the online world, bringing together a rich range of resources, from news items and quick links to Web sites to information about collections and objects in libraries, museums and archives. Users can also personalise Discover to access resources that match their particular interests.

Read aims to enhance enjoyment of books and reading by giving people access to great reading resources as well as opportunities to meet other readers either face to face or online.

The Joint Steering Committee (JSC) for Revision of Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules is currently working on a new standard for resource description - 'RDA: Resource Description and Access'. RDA is built on the foundations established by AACR and will provide a comprehensive set of guidelines and instructions on resource description and access covering all types of content and media. The new standard is being developed for use primarily in libraries, but consultations are being undertaken with other major stakeholders (e.g. system developers, metadata communities, MARC format developers, and international programmes such as the Program for Cooperative Cataloging, the ISSN International Centre, and IFLA) in an effort to attain an effective level of alignment between RDA and the metadata standards used in those communities. RDA is due to be published in 2008.

A Prospectus has been produced to provide information about RDA. The document is in three parts:

the prospectus text

a draft outline of the chapters of RDA

a sample text to demonstrate the style and layout of RDA

The Prospectus and more detailed information of some of the areas to be incorporated into the new standard can be found on the Joint Steering Committee Web site: http://www.collectionscanada.ca/jsc/

The work of the JSC relies heavily on the members of the constituent organisations. The UK's interests on the JSC are represented by CILIP (Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals) and the British Library. There are six JSC constituencies - the other four are the American Library Association, the Australian Committee on Cataloguing, the Canadian Committee on Cataloguing and the Library of Congress joint Committee on Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules.

CILIP draws its representatives from a variety of library and cataloguing agencies. Together with representatives from the British Library they form the CILIP/BL joint Committee on Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules. The CILIP/BL Committee can be contacted via: the Chair and BL representative Sally Strutt sally.strutt@bl.uk or via the CILIP representative Hugh Taylor jrht3@cam.ac.uk

Open Access Citation Information Study

In February 2005, JISC's Scholarly Communications Group (SCG) commissioned a study to look at Open Access citation information. This study was intended to examine the present sources for citation information on open access content, consider an ideal structure for the nature of citation information on open access content and the means of its collection and distribution, and write a report making recommendations to JISC for consideration in a national and international context.

The study has now completed its final report, a condensed and extended version of which can be found on the JISC SCG home page at the URL below. It is envisaged that the report will contribute to JISC's thinking in this area and it is currently being considered in that context.

Revealweb Receives a Further Award

Revealweb, a Web site that brings together information about accessible resources for visually impaired people, was presented with a Getting the Message Across Award from the National Information Forum (NIF) on 19 October 2005 at the Law Society, London. The awards acknowledge excellence and imagination in the provision of information to disabled people and others severely disadvantaged by lack of appropriate information. The citation noted that "the selection panel were impressed by the innovatory aspect of the service, the fact that it is free and the sheer scale of the resource".

Revealweb is a free Internet database that brings together information details of over 100,000 books and information in alternative formats available from more than 200 organisations in the UK. It offers a choice of formats, including audiocassettes, Braille, talking books, large and giant print, Moon, Braille music, tactile graphics and audio-described videos and information about new titles is continuously added. A complementary register of suppliers gives information on services for visually impaired people. Revealweb has already received a Commendation of Widening Access to Information in the 2005 Jodi Mattes Awards and was praised in the House of Commons Select Committee report on public libraries. Revealweb was launched in September 2003 and is currently funded by MLA.

The Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA) has announced a list of 38 collections in libraries and archives across England that have been recognised as having outstanding national and international importance under the Designation Scheme. Celebrating and safeguarding the nation's heritage held in libraries and archives, the new status will enable the 28 libraries and archives to raise the profile of the collections and attract more visitors.

The list includes an impressive variety of library and archive collections, ranging from religious and Higher Education library collections to business and company archives. Some highlights include:

Archives relating to Cornwall's hard-rock mining industry in Cornwall Record Office - A comprehensive overview from the sixteenth century to the present day

All holdings in the Britten-Pears library, one of the UK's most important music archives and facilities for music research.

The unrivalled Birmingham Collection, charting every aspect of Birmingham's history, at the Birmingham Central library, as well as photographic, archive, literature, music and printing collections.

The Archive of the United Africa Company held by Unilever Archive and Records Management in the North West containing papers dating from the late eighteenth century to the colonial period of African history and its aftermath.

All collections held in the British Library of Political and Economic Science at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

CREE Project Announces Full Collection of Reports and Results

Further to the release of the October issue of D-Lib containing an article describing the work of the CREE (Contextual Resource Evaluation Environment) Project, together with a companion article in this issue of Ariadne providing an overview of the technical development, the Project itself announces the availability of the full collection of reports and results from the work undertaken.

The CREE Project was funded by JISC to explore the user requirements for the presentation of Internet search tools within institutional environments (e.g, a local web environment, a VLE/course management system or an institutional portal). Technical investigation of the JSR 168 and WSRP portlet standards was also carried out to examine their potential for enabling such presentation. (See article in this issue.)

All reports and results are available through the project Web site at http://www.hull.ac.uk/esig/cree/, together with a range of presentations and publications describing the work. The reports newly released are as follows:

Summary Overview of the project, its work and conclusions

User testing report and results spreadsheetOver 70 people across three institutions took part in a series of user testing sessions with three fully functional interactive demonstrators, based on one of the institutional environments listed above. The results provide feedback on the use of search tools within each of these environments (generally very positive) as well as providing valuable comments on the role of searching to back up findings from earlier reports on the survey and focus groups carried out. Screenshots of the demonstrators are also available.

Final reports on the investigation of JSR 168 and WSRP portlet standardsThe final reports from the technical partners in the CREE Project capture much of the experience gained from the adaptation of existing search tools for use within a portlet, as well as provide tips and leads for others wishing to explore these technologies.

Literature ReviewA wide-ranging literature review has informed the work of the Project throughout its lifetime. It addresses the functional aspects of searching as well many of the technologies behind searching.

Communications and Collaboration Tools Feasibility StudyTo complement the investigation of the presentation of search tools within institutional environments, a survey and series of interviews were carried out to investigate user requirements for the presentation of communication and collaboration tools within the same environments and the capability of JSR 168 and WSRP to enable this, respectively.

Dramatic Rise in Number of Authors Publishing in Open Access Journals

Twenty-nine percent of senior authors questioned say that they have published in an open access journal, according to a new independent survey. This is up 18% compared to a similar question asked in a study carried out in 2004 by the same researchers, a two-and-a-half-fold increase in just twelve months. BioMed Central has welcomed the fact that independent research is now available to confirm its own experience of the continuing growth of open access publishing.

"New Journal Publishing Models: An International Survey of Senior Researchers" was produced by CIBER, an independent publishing think tank based at City University in London. The study, published in September 2005, is based on a survey of 5513 authors "typically principal investigators or research group leaders" who had published in an ISI-indexed journal during 2004. It is the follow up to a previous CIBER study conducted in 2004.

Ian Rowlands and Dave Nicholas, the authors of the report, found that "the research community is now much more aware of the open access issue." The report authors write "There has been a large rise in authors knowing quite a lot about open access (up 10 percentage points from the 2004 figure) and a big fall in authors knowing nothing at all about open access (down 25 points)."

30% of authors surveyed claimed to know "a lot" or "quite a lot" about open access journals. This is up from 18% in the 2004 survey. Altogether 81% of authors claim to have some awareness of open access, up from 66% in 2004.

Rowlands and Nicholas found that "Authors strongly believe that, as a result of open access, articles will become more accessible". 75% of authors surveyed agreed with the statement "High prices make it difficult to access the journals literature".

The researchers also found that "senior authors and researchers believe downloads to be a more credible measure of the usefulness of research than traditional citations." Open access has been shown elsewhere to lead higher downloads of articles. According to PNAS publisher Ken Fulton, "PNAS Open Access articles receive 50% more full-text accesses and PDF downloads than subscription-access articles in the first month after publication and maintain higher usage in subsequent months." The average research article published in BioMed Central's journals in the last year has received more than 1100 accesses in the first 3 months following publication, and BioMed Central recently introduced a "Highly accessed" logo to identify those articles which have received a large number of accesses for their age.